FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (aka FRANKENSTEIN VS. BARAGON), an
engaging bit of Toho nonsense, has one of the more interesting openings
of all the Toho monster films. Near the end of World War II, the
Japanese get a secret weapon from the Nazis - the heart of the
Frankenstein monster. How they are going to use this to win the
war is unclear, but before they can do anything, they are killed when
the Americans drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima! Goodbye, Takashi
Shimura! Nice to see you!

The rest of the film takes place two decades
later when the heart turns up once again and (I think) is eaten by a
poor boy who then takes on Frankensteinian qualities, and is also prone
to extreme growth, due to the effect of the radiation of the bomb on
the heart. In short time, he is the size of your typical Toho
monster. He's not a bad monster, and, although he will eat
animals belonging to farmers, he only harms human beings in
self-defense. Thus, the film needs a second monster, and unfortunately
Toho decided against their original plan of using Godzilla and
substituted a new monster named Baragon. Some monsters - Mothra,
Rodan, Ghidorah - are instantly classic. Baragon, sort of a
fire-breathing dog with a rhino horn, is not one of them.

Yet, the film remains fun thanks to a pretty decent performance of
Koji Furuhata as the Frankenstein Monster (called "Frankenstein" in
error several times throughout the film) and the heroic trio of
Tadao Takashima, Nick Adams and Kumi Mizuno as the only people in Japan
who don't want him killed. My only regret is that the DVD I
watched did not have a choice for an English-dubbed soundtrack. Much of
Nick Adams charm, if you want to call it that, comes from his voice,
and he loses half his appeal when he is dubbed into Japanese.
Kumi Mizuno has appeal to spare dubbed or undubbed, and it is fun
to see them teamed together, although there is no doomed romance, or
any romance at all, unlike their more memorable pairing in MONSTER ZERO the same year. ½ - JB